Shay swallowed hard. “You’re talking about a considerable amount of money.”

Again he nodded.

A kaleidoscope of possibilities fanned out and then merged in Shay’s mind. She could provide for Hank’s education, start her catering business.…

“Would I have full control?”

Mitch was turning a teaspoon from end to end on the tabletop. “‘Full control’ is a very broad term. You can read all the material as we go along. I’ll be as kind as I can, but I won’t sugarcoat anything, and if I find a skeleton, I’ll drag it out of the closet.”

Shay’s color flared, arching on her cheekbones and flowing in a hot rush down her neck. “That sounds like Lucetta White’s method.”

“Read a few of her books,” Mitch answered briskly. “Lucetta invents her own skeletons, bone by grizzly bone.”

The coffee was done, but Shay couldn’t offer any, couldn’t move from her chair. She rested her forehead in her palms. “I’ll have to think about this.”

She heard Mitch’s chair scrape the linoleum floor as he stood up to go. “Fair enough. I’ll call you in a few days.”

Shay did not move until she had heard the front door open and close again. Then she went and locked it and watched through one of the picture windows as Mitch Prescott’s fancy car pulled away.

Mitch waited for three days.

During those seventy-two endless hours, he hired a cook and a housekeeper and a gardener. He sent for the contents of his apartment in San Francisco, and he read everything he could find concerning Rosamond Dallas until the muscles in the small of his back threatened spasmodic rebellion.

On Tuesday morning, he drove to Reese Motors.

“Damn,” Shay grumbled as she came out of the plush RV on the back lot.

Ivy tried very hard not to smile as she took in the yellow-and-black-striped suit Shay was wearing. “I think you make a terrific bee,” she said.

“Flattery,” Shay answered bitterly, “will get you nowhere. Don’t you dare laugh!”

Ivy put one hand over her mouth and the diamonds in her showy engagement ring sparkled in the sunshine. “Put the hat on. Here, let me help you.”

Shay submitted to the hat, which was really more of a hood. It was black, with nodding antennae on top.

Richard Barrett approached with long strides. “The wings!” he thundered. “Where are the wings?”

“He thinks he’s Steven Spielberg,” Ivy whispered.

Shay, standing there in the hot sun, sweltering in her padded velveteen bee suit, wanted to slap him. “Wings?” she hissed.

“Of course,” Richard replied with the kind of patience usually reserved for deaf dogs. “Bees do have wings, you know.”

The wings were hunted down by Richard’s curvaceous young assistant, who was taking this taste of show biz very seriously. She wore her sunglasses on top of her head and constantly consulted her clipboard.

“I don’t need this job, you know,” Shay muttered to no one in particular as she was shuffled onto an X chalked on the asphalt in front of a new-model sedan with all the bells and whistles.